I’m Sorry

As the senior alderman of the East Chemply, Pennsylvania, Town Board of Overseers, I, Walter K. Heblinger, would like to apologize to my constituents, and most especially to my family and my beloved wife, Kirsten, for sexting a nude photograph of myself to various citizens, and I would particularly like to apologize for circling my genitals, in the photograph, with red lipstick and adding vibrating exclamation points, thunderbolts, and the word “Yowza!” I would also like to apologize to my mother, Sylvia Heblinger, of Tassament, New Hampshire, for allowing her full-length oil portrait to appear directly over my nude left shoulder, and for permitting an unknown hacker to Photo-shop horns onto her forehead, along with a dialogue balloon reading, “Give it to me now.”

I also deeply regret the fact that my wife’s newly purchased floral linen duvet is visible in the photo, beneath an inflatable sex doll that is wearing, to my further regret, my wife’s wedding dress, a cowboy hat, and a ball gag. And I would like to assure our friends and neighbors that even though, in the photo, I am wearing Kirsten’s tortoiseshell headband and her double strand of pearls, I did so entirely without her knowledge. She also had nothing to do with the hand-lettered sheet of notebook paper I’m holding in the photo, which reads, “I’m prettier than Kirsten.”

I would also like to apologize profusely to my teen-age son, Walt, Jr., for initiating an online correspondence with his American-history teacher, Ms. Kelli Withers, in which I pretended to be John Boehner, seeking a ghostwriter for my memoirs and a participant in what I referred to as “some extra-spicy late-afternoon Embassy Suites boom-boom-pow.” I also apologize to Boehner for insisting, in my correspondence, that I had learned “deepwater love techniques” while I was a Navy SEAL.

At this point, I would also like to apologize to my lovely teen-age daughter, Jessica, for leaving messages on the Facebook pages of her best friends Haley, Ellyn, and Jilleen, using the name Jag Bronco, who I claimed was a quarterback and a triple-extreme snowboarder from a nearby middle school. I’m sorry that, as Jag, I also invited each girl to prom and sent all three a photo of my actual genitals, with the advisory “My genitals look older than the rest of me because of all the wear and tear from my triple-extreme snowboarding.”

But primarily I would like to express my most profound remorse for mass e-mailing a video of myself to all the registered voters in East Chemply, in which I simulated various sex acts, in a public park, with a bronze statue of Josiah T. Chemply, who founded our fine community some two hundred and fifteen years ago. I am appalled that at the beginning of this video I am dressed as Josiah’s lovely wife, Annabeth Bowers Chemply, wearing a mop wig and a disturbingly bosomy Colonial gown, and that as I rub myself against the statue I can be heard to moan, “Oh, Josiah, you’re so much hotter than your ne’er-do-well brother, Big Ned Chemply.” I am mortified to admit that, as the video progresses, and after chugging a container of something I refer to as “hundred-proof mighty-man-mojo juice,” I strip off my gown to reveal my sister-in-law Joyce Nersten’s hand-crocheted pink cardigan, which I’m wearing over a tank top with iron-on letters reading, “Joyce Looks Like Big Ned Chemply.” I am further horrified that, as blaring techno music is heard, I turn from the camera, dancing provocatively, and reveal that on the seat of my bikini panties I have scrawled the words “I wish I lived in West Chemply.”

I don’t know if I can ever properly atone for my many unfortunate actions, including using the credit-card information of my father-in-law, Otto Nersten, to order twenty cartons of sex toys, which I then floated in Otto’s aboveground swimming pool on the night before his annual Fourth of July rain-or-shine prayer-a-thon and barbecue. I am therefore, at least temporarily, stepping down as senior alderman, in order to enter a program of intensive rehabilitative therapy, especially in the light of this morning’s podcast, in which I’m wearing leather chaps, a harness, a military cap, and a bright-blue pageboy wig and demanding that the viewer address me as “Miss Smurfette, sir! ” ♦